Sonal Khullar is associate professor of art history at the University of Washington and author of Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930-1990, published by the University of California Press and winner of the 2017 AAS Bernard S. Cohn Prize.
To begin with, please tell us what your book is about.
Worldly Affiliations traces the emergence of a national art world in twentieth-century India and emphasizes its cosmopolitan ambitions and orientations in contrast to previous studies that have highlighted postcolonial difference or deviation from Western norms. I focus on four Indian artists—Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941), Maqbool Fida Husain (1915-2011), K. G. Subramanyan (1924-2016), and Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003)—and situate their careers within national and global histories of modernism and modernity. These artists challenged the canons, disciplines, schools, and institutions of British colonialism and Indian nationalism, thereby modeling what Edward Sai ...

I was first alerted to the existence of Dr. Juliane Schober and Dr. Pauline Hope Cheong’s project, “Asia Mediated: Interdisciplinary Curriculum Innovation at Arizona State University,” by the sudden increase in undergraduate students roaming the halls near my office. I ran into one of the undergraduate interns in the elevator and asked what was going on; she replied that they were working on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of something called “Asia Mediated.” My interest was additionally piqued when the program announced its first invited speaker, Dr. Wenhong Chen, who would talk on the topic of “Big Data in China: Big Dreams and Big Brother.”
After browsing some of the Asia Mediated literature following the announcement of this first talk, it seemed that the project’s push to uncover the multiplicity of assemblages that are transforming and are being transformed by the interplay of new media and the Asian context promised to reveal some important aspects ...

Tania Murray Li is Canada Research Chair in the Political-Economy and Culture of Asia and the Director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Dr. Li is author of Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier, published by Duke University Press and winner of the 2017 AAS George McT. Kahin Book Prize (SE Asia).
To begin with, please tell us what your book is about.
Drawing on two decades of ethnographic research in Sulawesi, Indonesia, the book offers an intimate account of the emergence of capitalist relations among indigenous highlanders who privatized their common land to plant a boom crop, cacao. Spurred by the hope of ending their poverty and isolation, some prospered, while others lost their land and struggled to sustain their families. Yet the winners and losers in this transition were not strangers—they were kin and neighbors, increasingly caught up in a set of competitive, capitalist relations that imposed a stringent market discipline. My acc ...

By Melissa A. Brzycki and Stephanie Montgomery
In April 2016, Paramount Pictures released a photo of Scarlett Johansson cast as Major Motoko Kusanagi for the new live-action version of Ghost in the Shell, based on the Japanese manga series of the same name (Kōkaku Kidōtai). A heated discussion of race and the Hollywood whitewashing of Asian culture ensued across multiple social media platforms throughout pre-production and following the movie’s release in March 2017. For many fans, it felt as though the world of Ghost in the Shell—a cyberpunk futurist landscape of genderbending cyborg bodies—was stripped of its meaning to become a dazzling CGI backdrop for a mundane Hollywood plot. In the process of “translating” this beloved media franchise for an English-speaking audience, something had obviously been lost. As academics with training in East Asian language, culture, and history, we felt we could contribute to discussions like these. The Ghost in the Shell controversy finally m ...

By Richard Fox
Image 1: Roundtable discussion on the future of Timor-Leste studies, with Lisa Palmer, Fidelis Manuel Leite Magalhaes and Susana de Matos Viegas, and chaired by Elizabeth Drexler.
The 2017 conference in Toronto marked the beginning of an ambitious two-year initiative devoted to raising the profile of Timor-Leste studies—both at AAS and in the wider North American academy. With generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Southeast Asia Council’s (SEAC) Indonesia and Timor-Leste Studies Committee (ITLSC) hosted a series of special events, including an all-day pre-conference workshop attended by senior scholars, students and public intellectuals from Timor-Leste as well as North America, Australia, Europe and other parts of Asia.
Looking ahead, the ITLSC is planning a similar series of events for 2018 in Washington, D.C. Let us know if you’d like to get involved and help to shape the future of TL studies at AAS—additional information and contact details ...